HARRY PIEL

Harry Piel was a major figure in early cinema. He wrote and directed his first movie when he was just 20 years old in 1912, and he made several movies over the next three years, and then began acting in them as well! He made many movies over the next decades. In 1933, he joined the Nazi party and made movies for them. In 1934, he made Der Herr der Welt, a science fiction movie with robots, but he had actually used robots in a movie he made in 1915! At the end of World War II, he was sentenced to 6 months in jail and banned from the film industry for 5 years. In 1950, he started a new film company, but did not have much success, and he retired in 1953 and passed away in 1961 at the age of 63. Unfortunately, almost all the negatives of his silent films were destroyed when Germany was bombed during World War II, so few of his films survive, and that, combined with his Nazi collaboration, has caused him to be largely forgotten, except by major film buffs.